The objective: I was wondering which wood gives off the most heat because wood costumers always ask which type of wood burns the best.

Methods/Materials

I used the idea of calorimetry to compare the heat energy of the three different types of wood; olive, almond, and "junk" wood (which is actually a low density wood such as cotton wood). First I took six pieces of each wood of the same volume by using "gravel displacement." I then burned the wood under the same conditions. I took 14 liters of water for each fire and measured their starting temperature and put them each on a fire. Every 15 minutes I measured the temperature of each 14 liters of water.

Results

Olive wood immediatly reached boiling so I had start another pot of water. I added the temperature change of the two pots together before calculating the heat. The almond wood and "junk" wood had pretty much the same temperature change.

Conclusions/Discussion

I came to the conclusion the olive wood definitely has more heat energy, but I was surprised almond wood did not have more heat than it did.

The project used calorimetry to determine which type of wood gave off the most heat.